1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a system and method for organizing pages of an electronic document, and more particularly to a system and method for grouping and organizing pages of an electronic document into pre-defined categories.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many software programs are currently available that allow a user to scan in a number of paper documents into a single electronic document, which can be sent to a recipient via electronic mail (or shared via a network or the Internet) and can be viewed by the recipient using a document viewing software program. One example of a document scanning and viewing software program is Adobe Acrobat from Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif. Using the Adobe Acrobat software program, paper documents can be scanned into a single electronic document, which is often referred to as a portable document format (PDF) document or file, and can be viewed by the user and the recipient. The electronic document is typically arranged as a sequence of individual pages where each page can have objects, such as text, graphics, images, color spaces, annotations, and so on. The software programs advantageously allow recipients to immediately view, print and store the electronic document.
In many instances, however, the paper documents are scanned in, in a random, unorganized sequence, which makes it very difficult and time consuming to find a particular page within the electronic document. One solution can be to manually organize the paper documents prior to scanning, however, the individual organizing the paper documents or performing the scanning may not have the skill, knowledge or time needed to correctly organize the paper documents. Moreover, organizing the paper documents prior to scanning can be very resource intensive, time consuming and wasteful. Also, organizing the pages prior to scanning might take care of the order of the pages, but it does not generate a table of contents or tree structure (like the bookmarks) that makes it easy to find any particular page within the stack of pages. For example, if K-1s are always located at the end and if there are 40 K-1s in a stack of paper documents, without the table of contents or bookmark tree structure, one might spend a significant amount of time looking for a particular K-1 even though the pages are arranged in a pre-specified order.
Ultimately, the recipient may want the pages of the electronic document organized in a specific order (an order that is unknown to the individual) so that locating a page or pages can be accomplished in an efficient and timely manner. For example, a taxpayer may scan in over fifty pages of tax documents in a random order into an electronic document and send the electronic document to an accountant or accounting firm for the preparation of an income tax return. In this situation, the accountant may need to organize the pages of the electronic document in a specific order so that navigating through the electronic document during the preparation and review of the income tax return can be performed in an accurate and efficient manner. The taxpayer may also want the pages organized so that navigating through the electronic document, when reviewing the completed income tax return, can be performed in a quick, accurate and efficient manner.
One way the recipient of the scanned in electronic document can organize the pages is by using the bookmarks and thumbnails features of the software program. For example, referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, once a page of the electronic document is displayed in a view area 100 of a display screen 101, the user can use a pointing device, such as a mouse, to select a bookmarks tab 102, which opens a bookmark window 200 that allows the user to view bookmark features and select bookmark functions. In particular, the user can select a bookmark button 202 to create a new bookmark, a trash can button 204 to delete a selected bookmark or an expand button 206 to expand a current bookmark. To bookmark a particular page of the electronic document, the page is displayed in the view area 100 and the user selects the bookmark button 202 to create a new bookmark 300 and inputs, using a keyboard or other input device (not shown), a title 302, e.g., B-2, for the bookmark 300 (see FIG. 3). The entire title 302 must be typed in each time a new bookmark is created and once created, the title 302 will appear next to the bookmark 300 in the bookmark window 200. Each page must be manually bookmarked using the bookmark button 202 and the keyboard.
FIG. 4 is a view of a display screen 101 illustrating a number of bookmarks 300 and corresponding titles 302 for the bookmarks 300 in the bookmark window 200. To organize the bookmarks 300, the user can move a particular bookmark 300 by dragging and dropping the bookmark 300 to another location within the existing bookmarks. For example, the bookmark B-2 can be dragged, using a pointing device, and dropped between bookmark B-1 and the bookmark C-1, as shown in FIG. 5. Even though the bookmark B-2 has been moved, the sequence of the page corresponding to the bookmark does not change. That is, even though the bookmarks may be arranged according to the user's preferences, the pages of the electronic document remain in the scanned in order.
The sequence of the pages of the electronic document can be viewed by selecting a thumbnails tab 600 that opens a thumbnail window 602, which displays a small view of the pages of the electronic document, as shown in FIG. 6. Below each page is a number that represents the page number of the electronic document. In the illustrated example, the B-1 page is the third page of the electronic document even though the bookmark B-1 is the second bookmark. Therefore, to correctly organize the document, the B-1 page needs to be moved to the second page of the electronic document to correspond to the order of the bookmarks 300. The B-1 page can be moved by dragging and dropping the B-1 page to be between the first page and the second page in the thumbnail window 602. Hence, the B-1 page now corresponds to the bookmark B1.
As described above, the conventional process of organizing pages of an electronic document can be difficult, time consuming and error prone. For example, manually creating consistent bookmark titles for each page of a sixty-page electronic document can take several hours. Even after several hours of work, the resulting electronic document still fails to be a standardized consistent organized document with, for example, a hierarchy of consistent bookmarks and a table of contents.